The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has given its daily update on the war in Ukraine.
It says the Kremlin’s appointment of hard-line General Sergei Surovikin to lead forces in Ukraine is probably an effort to improve the “delivery of the operation”.
However, he may have to contend with an “increasingly factional” and “poorly resourced” Russian defence ministry, the MoD says.
“Russia has likely lacked a single empowered field commander” for much of the war, the update says.
It’s thought that General Alexandr Dvornikov did hold this role between April and August, although it’s not clear how much control he held over the “often disparate and competing groupings of forces”.
